Larian Just Wanted Baldur's Gate 3 To Break Even

thegamer.com:

Baldur's Gate 3 is arguably the biggest surprise hit of the past decade, establishing developer Larian Studios as one of the best in the business and opening up the world of Baldur's Gate to millions of people. Not even the most optimistic of the game's earliest adopters expected the widespread popularity of Baldur's Gate 3, and even Larian itself was only really hoping before launch that the game would just break even.

In a talk at GDC 2024, Larian CEO Swen Vincke revealed all sorts of interesting information about Baldur's Gate 3, including the fact that Larian's main hope for the game before launch was for it to just make back its development costs. At the time, Larian wasn't making Baldur's Gate 3 with profits in mind, even though making money on the title would probably have been nice. Instead, Larian was much more interested in Baldur's Gate 3's potential to open doors.

Despite having made two excellent CRPGs in the Divinity: Original Sin games, it's worth remembering Larian was probably considered a fairly small developer before work began on Baldur's Gate 3. Working with Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast on an established IP like Baldur's Gate would have been a huge opportunity for such a small developer, and one that arguably would have had more value in building a bigger reputation rather than monetary gain.

Thankfully, Baldur's Gate 3 was more than likely a massive commercial success too, having sold millions of copies. We don't know how much cash the game has raked in right now, but we do know it caused a 40 percent spike in Hasbro's digital revenue all by itself.

You'd think with the runaway success and constant praise Larian has been getting due to Baldur's Gate 3 that the studio would be well up for a sequel, but it looks like this isn't the case. Later in the talk, Vincke confirmed that Larian has absolutely no plans to make Baldur's Gate 4, or release any expansions or DLC for Baldur's Gate 3, instead choosing to make something new. It's possible that